


Do You Love?

by Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Character Death, College AU, M/M, Stephen King's The Raft, this is probably nothing but pain honestly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 06:22:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17278727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent
Summary: You don’t make smores with $25 chocolate bars and organic graham crackers, Will wants to tell Hannibal, that isn’t how any of this works. But though his sense of exasperation is comfortable and entirely familiar, it touches him now in such a way that for the second time in less than twenty-four hours Will finds himself on the verge of tears.----To celebrate the end of midterms, Will, Matthew, Hannibal and Alana go to a remote campsite to build a bonfire. When they spot a raft floating in the middle of the lake, they decide to swim out to it, but find themselves besieged by a strange carnivorous oil slick.A HANNIBAL AU based on the Stephen King's THE RAFT.





	Do You Love?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ByJoveWhatASpend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ByJoveWhatASpend/gifts).



>   
> You can read the original version of THE RAFT [here.](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/en304/syllabus2015-16/king_the_raft.pdf)   
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Please mind the tags, friends, and don't read if awful things happening to your favorites hurts you too badly. This is probably going to end up being among the most upsetting things I have ever written.
> 
> There will be major character death here. There's two ways this story can wrap up, and I'm still not absolutely sure which one is the True Ending, but there's a better than 50% chance that no one is getting out alive.

The cookout wasn’t Will’s idea exactly, but he was the one who put the notion into Hannibal’s head. 

He’ll wonder later, when things are almost at their end, if that makes all of it his fault. 

They’d all been drinking, the four of them - Hannibal and Alana, Will and Matthew - and maybe Will had already had more than he probably should have, and maybe he knew damn well that he wasn’t going to stop any time soon, but so what? Midterms were over, and it looked like he’d survived the cull again, so what if he spent a couple of days getting shitfaced?

The four of them were talking, which effectively meant that Matthew and Alana talked while Will faded into the background and Hannibal observed in that thoughtful and quiet shrink-in-training way of his, but the two of them hadn’t really been talking together. Alana and Matthew talked  _ around _ one another, avoiding open hostility but occasionally sniping at each other under the cover of indirect criticisms or “jokes,” but a thread of the conversation caught Will, yanking him out of his daydreams and fully into the social world of his friends, and he found himself himself speaking at length, the whiskey glass on the coffee table beside him forgotten. 

High school was three years in the past and utterly unmourned, but that night Will found himself talking about the six months he and his day had spent living near Lake Eerie, back when he was only fifteen - or really, not about the time spent in Michigan itself, but the fall nights there, the bonfires on the lake with new friends who he barely knew and who he knew wouldn’t last, the primal feeling of closeness that came from building a fire together and tending it, the sudden warm camaraderie you experienced cooking hotdogs and marshmallows under the moonlight with near strangers as you all passed a bottle of vodka that some kid had stolen from his dad’s liquor cabinet around the magic circle that ringed the fire’s flickering light. 

He was holding the interests of all three of them, but the way Hannibal was watching him… It was like there was nothing else in the room - nothing else in the whole world - except Will. It knocked Will off balance, being looked at like that. 

“Wish I could do something like with you guys - with my  _ real  _ friends,” Will concluded, lamely, whatever poetic vision that had guided his early words deserting him, leaving him feeling awkward and too exposed. He’d meant it, though, unreservedly, and feeling their eyes on him Will reached for his whiskey glass and drained it in one long swallow.

“That all makes me hungry,” Matthew said, breaking the silence. He was two years older than Will, but sometimes it seemed like he had the appetite of a seventeen-year-old. “You want anything, hun?”

Will shook his head. “I’m alright.”

When Matthew was gone, Hannibal leaned forward in his seat conspiratorially and said, “Let’s do it.”

“What?” Will said, a little dully.   

“Let’s have a bonfire,” Hannibal said. And then he added, as though the word had an unaccustomed taste in his mouth, “A cookout.”

On the loveseat beside him, Alana attempted to chime in with the Voice of Reason. Will told him that it wouldn’t annoy him as much as it did if he wasn’t already drunk. “It’s too cold for a cookout. And anyway, where would we have it?”

“That’s a point,” Will said. None of them have the outdoor space for a bonfire. For his first two years at university, Will had shared an apartment with Hannibal. It was a somewhat odd arrangement, a first-year Psychiatry grad student living with a baby freshman, but they got along so well that it was almost scary. He’d only just moved out a few months ago, during summer break; Alana had been giving some gentle but not at all subtle hints that it was time for him to move on, and Matthew had been trying to talk Will into moving in with him since their two-month anniversary. Hannibal hadn’t said anything to stop him moving out, but Alana hadn’t moved in after he was gone, either. 

There’s a communal pool and a courtyard at Hannibal’s apartment building, but it isn’t the kind of place where you could just light a fire outback whenever you wanted. Alana’s apartment building offered no green space whatsoever, and Matthew’s place -  _ our place, _ Will reminded himself - had a backyard that offered a concrete patch big enough for a table and a couple of lawn chairs. A patch of grass that was about a foot and a half-wide lined the space between the porch and the wooden fence. Matthew had a small, rusty charcoal grill out there, but Will had been relieved to find he almost never used it - the thing stuck him as one hell of a risky firetrap.  

Will leaned forward and refilled his glass. Looking down into the amber liquid, he was struck by how disappointed he was at the bonfire idea being shot down.  _ I should slow down or I’m like to get weepy, _ he’d thought, and then he’d downed a third of the contents of his glass. 

From behind him, Matthew said, “We could just go to a campground by one of those little lakes. Drive ten minutes outside of the city and they’re all over the place.”

“Those will all be closed for the season by now,” Alana said. 

Matthew shrugged with one shoulder. “So what?” he asked, but without any malice. He plopped down on the couch next to Will and twined one of his long arms over his shoulder. “All you have to do is unlatch the gate and drive in. No one is going to see us.”

Across from Will, Alana was trying to make hard eye contact with him, and Will knew that she wanted him to rein in his wild boyfriend. She was right about that, too, probably. Matthew had been arrested a few times - never for anything serious, never for anything that would make Will scared of him, just stupid shit like shoplifting and drunk and disorderly, and he didn’t need to get into trouble again. 

Will knew that he should try to talk Hannibal and Matthew both out of it, but he wanted to have the fire. 

Unaware that he was mirroring Hannibal’s words and body language from only a few minutes ago, Will leaned forward and said, “Let’s do it.”

  
  


All of that had been the night before. 

Now, Will snoops through the host of shopping bags in the back of Hannibal’s car with a growing sense of wonder. He straightens to turn towards Hannibal, who is busy unloading what is obviously a brand new and very expensive firepit from the back of his trunk. 

“You couldn’t keep this simple, could you?” Will says, but he feels the wide grin on his own face, and knows that Hannibal can hear it in his voice, too. “A couple packages of ballpark franks and some store-brand ketchup and buns, maybe a bag of marshmallows?”

Hannibal has always been inclined towards grand gestures, but he’s really outdone himself this time. There is just  _ so much food, _ it looks like Hannibal expected to feed a dozen people instead of just four, and most of it has gourmet labels. The hotdogs are from a local bourgie butcher, Will sees, hand-made in-house, and the chocolate bars are from a high-end candy store. 

_ You don’t make smores with $25 chocolate bars and organic graham crackers, _ Will wants to tell him,  _ that isn’t how any of this works.  _ But though his sense of exasperation is comfortable and entirely familiar, it touches him now in such a way that for the second time in less than twenty-four hours Will finds himself on the verge of tears.     

“Did you spend the entire morning shopping?” Will goes on, falling into a pattern of griping that is just as familiar as the exasperation at Hannibal’s shopping habits. “You must have spent more on all of this than Matthew and I spend on food in a week.”

“I want for you to be happy,” Hannibal says in a soft voice. 

Hannibal is usually such a reserved person that moments like these - moments where he drops his guard and allows himself to be straightforward in regards to his feelings - always knock Will off balance. Very few people, Will knows, have been privileged to see Hannibal so vulnerable.    

“I know you do,” Will says, embarrassed by the rawness of his own emotions. “Thank you,” he adds, and then ducks his head back into the car find the straps on a couple of the canvas shopping bags. It gives him a few seconds to get his face under control, at least. 

That is why he doesn’t hear Matthew coming. 

When Will straightens, he sees Matthew wresting the heavy metal firepit from Hannibal’s hands. “I got it,” he says, already pulling, and Hannibal gives it to himself without contest. 

Matthew lifts the firepit up over his head, just to show everyone that he can, and struts off through the sand, carrying his burden down to a picnic bench near the water’s edge. Alana is waiting for them down there, seated at the table, and when she sees Will and Hannibal she lifts a hand in greeting. 

“Your boyfriend is a jackass,” Hannibal says, his tone conversational, as the two of them head towards the water. 

“Yeah, I know it,” Will says, and is not really surprised by the great measure on fondness in his voice. “I like that about him, believe it or not.” 

In a nonchalant tone, Hannibal tells him, “Alana is of the opinion that he is a psychopath, as well as a bad influence on you.”

Will cuts his eyes to the side and catches Hannibal watching him out of the corner of his own eye. He makes a rude sound and says, “Bullshit.”

Hannibal says nothing, and annoyed now, Will says, “What do  _ you _ think?”

Hannibal is thoughtful for a moment, then he says, “I think that he’d do almost anything for you.” 

Matthew is headed back their way, and Hannibal falls silent - either because he has nothing else to say or because he doesn’t want to be overheard. 

Will says, “There’s a few more bags in the car, Matthew, can you get them for us?”

“I’d rather get you,” Matthew tells him, and curling his arms around Will’s waist scopes him up from behind. He carries Will through the sand, ignoring his shouted objections, in a messy figure eight, and then sits him down next to the table. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Will grouses, “don’t do that again. I’ve _ told _ you I don’t like that.” 

Matthew doesn’t answer him. He’s looking out over the water like he’s seen something, and as Will watches a crooked, devil-may-care smile bloom across the left side of his face. 

“Look at that,” Matthew says, as though to himself. He lopes down to the water’s edge, so close that the faint waves lap at the toes of his shoes. “Guys, look at that!” he shouts, excited now. 

And Will looks out across the water and sees the raft. 


End file.
